Heroic Garalon Killed: What a Buggy Encounter

After two and a half weeks, we finally scored a kill against Garalon. Every encounter after the first six progression hard modes is an exercise in patience and grinding. Our first (and only) Spirit Kings kill was a huge sigh of relief. By comparison, the Garalon kill was falling out of the chair from exhaustion. During the pulls pulls where everyone gets a good look at the new mechanics, people play a little more cautious. Everyone’s testing the boundaries of what they’re capable of. They’re experimenting with their specs and retuning themselves specifically for that fight.

But once people start getting the hang of it, it gradually gets easier. Once the strategy is ironed out and the team is exposed to the rest of the phases, it’s a mammoth of a DPS and healing check.

Our kill on heroic Garalon mirrored our kill on normal. I swear Garalon was mid-air just before the enraged Crush was about to connect. Healers were busy throwing as much DPS as they could in the final seconds. All the pulls earlier on in the night were all over the place. It’s easy to tell when players are losing focus.

They trip into the crush-zone.

They’re sloppy on Pheromone passes.

They get caught by the cleave.

Chalk it up to nerves. Maybe they’re gripping the mouse too hard. Who knows? Everyone deals with anxiety and pressure differently. Garalon’s pretty damn nerve wracking as it is.

All the strategies that are used on normal still apply. Keep the DoT classes working on the legs while the ranged players focus down the torso. Melee players will be jumping from leg to leg. We like to open the fight with Heroism but it’s not uncommon for it to be used in the final sub 33% phase.

We opened our Pheromone kite order with 2 tanks, then all the ranged DPS, then all the healers. You might want to pick a melee player two as the final backups in case your kiters suffer casualties along the chain.

Players that are next on the kite order should be in position when the current kiter has anywhere from 6 – 9 stacks as you’ll be passing around 13.

Given the option, it’s okay to get rid of the Pheromone before a crush even if your stack isn’t near 13. I had to hand mind off at around 10. Had I waited to pass it after the crush, my stacks would have reached 15.

The kiters near the stairs should leave a few gaps in Pheremone puddles as they drop them. This gives more path options for the kiters further on down the assignment chain.

Crush is no longer coupled to Pheromone passing. Have a raid-wide defensive cooldown planned for each Crush.

Healers should spike low health individuals in the few seconds leading up to a Crush so that they don’t take lethal.

Healing Priests

Spirit Shell gives you an edge. With two, it’s possible to alternate that on Crushes.

Atonement DPS on legs (especially within the blue circles) is a major plus.

Echo of Light is also amazing.

As a Shadow Priest, I feel like I’m the worst DPS class on this fight. Maybe it’s just me. Nothing like seeing myself in 16th place consistently.

The next boss for us is heroic Lei Shi. Right now, our biggest hurdle is consistently handling the Protectors as they spawn at the 20% intervals. They seem to ace and crush our healers quickly. How did your group handle them?

Our strategy for add handling during Lei Shi changed quite a lot from our first pull to our last. Ultimately, we found the best way to handle them was for the healers to watch for their own survival. Each class has a method of CC whether roots, stuns, knockbacks or snares. The tanks get priority to mark, we had a couple people play zone defense with CC and a couple people playing wild with CC, they would try and CC anything they say moving that wasn't a tank mark.

The big thing to get over is that there is no such thing as too much CC. Initially people were worried about CC'ing something that might already be CC'd by someone else. We had to pound it in that you should just CC anything, as long as it isn't killing people who cares? Through a combination of zone defense CC and healers watching their own backs we were able to get through it pretty smoothly.

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About me

My name is Matticus and this is my World of Warcraft blog. Here you can read about my thoughts regarding healing as a priest. As a guild master, I also write about guild and raid related topics. The blog has expanded to include thoughts from other regular contributors. The aim of this blog is to help you grow and improve. My unending goal is to have something relevant and useful in every post. or more, you can check out my columns on WoW Insider. Visit theGuildmasters to talk shop with other GMs, raid leaders, and officers. Or if you're looking to join a guild, check out my guild Conquest.